


i won't freeze you out, my heart is melting

by onceuponawar



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, also featuring some angst, and also be married, i just want these two to have more scenes together, snowest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 14:00:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9494675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponawar/pseuds/onceuponawar
Summary: Caitlin doesn't quite have control of her powers yet, but Iris feels the chill for only a moment before Doctor Snow is melting her all over again. Only this time, just figuratively.





	

STAR Labs is a lot more comforting at night, Iris thinks. There’s a pleasant hum of machinery and a little bit of moonlight shines through the high windows, casting multiple, dim rectangular glows on the floor. There’s no hustle or frantic haste or tears or a perpetual fear of death after everyone has gone home. Instead of feeling tense, jaw tight, just waiting for an alert that is followed by Barry rushing away to save the world, yet again, she's relaxed and strangely at peace. At this hour she can see how he, Cisco and Caitlin manage to feel so at home here.

Caitlin. 

Iris’ eyes travel to the entrance of the cortex, knowing that the doctor was still in her office just down the hall. Stein had run off with whatever it was that would help get rid of the Dominators and Lily had headed home not long after, leaving Caitlin to retreat to her research. Iris had been lurking about the lab all day, flitting in and out on breaks, mainly to see if there was any new news on how their friends were handling the alien race trying to invade their planet.

At the thought of aliens, the lab immediately felt less safe than it had moments ago and Iris pulls her olive colored sweater tighter around herself, as if the stitches themselves could chase away the terrible mental image of the extraterrestrial beings with massive mouths of teeth and a red dot on their foreheads. 

As if she could do anything to help.

She'd been severely struggling to find where she fit on Team Flash the past few months. She didn't have the powers or the brains of Barry, Cisco and Caitlin, all she had was her reporting skills and impeccable fashion knowledge, which was going to be of no use when fighting a meta human or… god, aliens. 

Barry kept telling her over and over that there would be no Flash without Iris West, but she knew for a fact that there would be, that he was wrong. He had proved just as much for nearly a year as she lived in blissful ignorance to the fact that he was anything more than her adorable, geeky, almost-adopted brother. But of course, she had no one to say anything about her insecurities to, Barry had his speed, her dad his access to information in the precinct, H.R with all of his future tech from his earth, Cisco with his vibing abilities, Wally with his own speed and Caitlin. . .

Caitlin.

Iris doesn't really know what compels her feet to begin dragging themselves out of the cortex and down the hall and she sure as hell doesn't know what she plans on saying when she walks into Caitlin’s spacious office. All she knows is that she doesn't want to be alone anymore and Caitlin is the only person she knows who might understand what she's going through. 

The doctor doesn't notice her entrance, bent over her computer and only occasionally looking up to scribble something down in the notebook that sits open beside her. Iris approaches cautiously, her arms folded protectively across her chest. 

“Um… hey.”

Caitlin jumps in her seat, curls bouncing, chair spinning in the direction of the voice as an icicle subconsciously flies from her fingertips. Her trajectory is nearly a foot off, fortunately she's always had terrible aim, but it still tears through the sweater of whoever spoke, slashing open the skin of their upper arm. Then follows is a high-pitched yell of pain that Caitlin immediately identifies as Iris’s. 

Her identification is verified when Caitlin’s eyes quickly blink across the rest of her body. The same lengthy legs, cascading hair and flawless brown skin as always. Her eyes are squeezed shut, making how long her eyelashes are even more noticeable, and she's grasping at her bicep. 

Caitlin jumps out of her chair, guilt coursing through her veins. The feeling is so common nowadays that it might as well just be in her blood, but there's a certain stab of it somewhere more delicate when she realizes she's the cause of that pain on Iris’ face.

“Iris, oh my god! I am so, so sorry. It's just become a reflex. The cuffs are charging right now, ah! Here, here, here,” Caitlin rushes towards the other woman, gently prying her hand away from her bicep and placing her own palm over the bloody wound, beginning to apply pressure. “Hey, can you walk to the med bay for me? I know it hurts and it's cold, but the faster you can get there the faster I can see how deep it is.”

Iris, teeth already chattering slightly, tries to take steady steps back in the direction she'd just come, the shattered icicle crunching under her feet. Caitlin is latched to her arm the entire time she's walking, squeezing Iris’ bicep and whispering a mixture of encouragements and profuse apologies. It feels like forever before she's sitting on the end of a cot, her entire left arm rigid from the cold. She cannot imagine a time where she had been in more pain, or more frozen, than she was right now, which was saying something. She’d been through a hell of a lot in the last year.

Caitlin is running around in a flurry and Iris sees none of the calm and collected precision the doctor has when she works on Barry’s injuries, which doesn't comfort her much. But when she thinks about the similarities between Caitlin zipping around the med bay trying to find bandages and stitches (something she'd vaguely head her mention after sitting down) and Barry zipping around the city trying to save people it does make her laugh a bit, the movement of her lips parting for the sound to escape her throat making her shiver.

Her pain begins to fade, but when Iris looks down at her wound, Caitlin is only halfway through stitching it up and she knows this should be at least a bit more painful than it is; even with the anesthetic Caitlin surely applied. She doesn't remember ever being numbed.

“Mhm, Caitlin, how bad is it?” Iris can hear her own words slur, but concern about it is almost immediately discarded. 

She's so tired.

Caitlin looks up from her completed stitch up job at the sound of Iris’s mumbled voice and abruptly shallow breathing. Iris almost giggles at the way her eyes widen and her red painted lips pucker, but when she goes to cover her mouth with her free hand she fumbles, nearly falling backwards onto the cot without a hand to brace herself. 

Caitlin catches her before she falls back all the way onto the pillow and Iris thinks she says “My knight in shining armor”. But it's drown out by the doctor’s voice, suddenly laced with fear, speaking:

“Iris? I need you to stay awake for me, okay? Keep your eyes open and try to clear your mind. You're suffering from severe hypothermia.”

“How is that possible?” she protests, attempting to do as the other woman says and sit up further, despite exhaustion eating away at her. “Hypothermia takes a half hour to develop in the coldest of conditions. That icicle hit me like five minutes ago.”

“Ten minutes and forty-three seconds ago, actually. And the sped up side effects must be because of my powers, something about them having a more enhanced cold signature.” Iris only registers bits and pieces of what Caitlin is saying, though she doesn't know whether it has something to do with her hypothermia diagnosis or the fact that the doctor keeps running back and forth between the cot and her supplies neatly organized on a table across the med bay.

Iris nearly drifts out of consciousness after an extended period of silence, which is when Caitlin lets out a yell and removes the heat pack from her arm. Iris misses the warmth almost immediately, but Caitlin’s tug at the hem of her sweater, fingers gently brushing her stomach, fulfills that need almost immediately.

“Take off your shirt,” she demands.

Even with a fogged brain, Iris thinks that shouldn't be the next step in this warming process. “What're you doing, Dr. Snow? Trying to strip me? That's unprofessional, you know. Since I’m dying and all.”

“No, Iris. One, you are not going to die; not while I'm here. And two, I'm not stripping you. I'm asking you to remove your shirt because that way we can attach the heat pack to your wound with medical gauze and tape instead of holding it manually. And also so we can get you into warmer clothes, plus blankets to raise your body temperature to a normal rate.” Caitlin babbles off a logical explanation, one that is surely valid, but Iris sees the way her cheeks flush at the suggestion and feels a sense of joy and accomplishment. 

So, wanting nothing more in that moment to be a complying patient, and maybe see Caitlin blush and fumble over her words like a school-girl again, Iris tentatively raises her arms above her head and allows the doctor to pull the sweater up and over, her long hair tangling in the fabric. Then, replacing the embarrassment of being in only a relatively plain black bra (with just a touch of lace on the outer edge) and skin tight jeans in front of Caitlin, with her bouncy brown curls and dark, alluring eyes and gentle, adorable crease between her eyebrows, is the humor at seeing the doctor attempt to keep her eyes off the amount of naked skin Iris is showing.

Caitlin is applying the heat pack to Iris’s bicep with medical gauze, just as promised, when the words “You can raise the body temperature of my lower half too, Dr. Snow” leave Iris’s lips without warning. She can’t help wishing that having hypothermia came with a thought-to-speech filter to prevent her from saying totally outing things like that. No girl that was straight said things like “you can warm my lower half” to other girls, even if they were very pretty and their very touch sent a feeling of pleasure through them.

Iris’s next step is to apologize for her behavior, whether dying (is she dying? how severe was this hypothermia? she didn’t know) or not. But before she can push the actually coherent words out through the haze she’s in, Caitlin speaks in the, what Iris had thought to be, awkward silence.

“Maybe can save that pleasantry for after you’re fully healed, Miss West.”

Oh my god, Iris thinks, her brain momentarily clear with shock, is Caitlin actually hitting on me? Caitlin Snow? And doing a damn smooth job of it? She barely has time to process what that means for them after this is all over before the doctor is continuing as if she hadn’t just blatantly flirted with another woman in the middle of her own med bay:

“What we can do right now, is reclothe you, wrap you in some blankets and get you fed. That will help raise your energy and hopefully your body temperature will be back to normal in an hour or so. Can you cough for me?”

Iris blinks twice, still overcoming her astonishment, stares at the deep red blush dusting Caitlin’s face for a moment, then laughs breathily and chokes a cough out. Caitlin’s pearly smile is worth the harsh pain that sears her throat as she does.

“Do you think you can drink something? It’ll feel good and help, trust me.” Caitlin doesn’t allow her to answer before she’s gone, presumably to where they keep all the food Barry and Wally have to consume in order to keep from passing out every time they run. Iris has never personally seen it, but she can’t imagine the quantity they must have to stash to fill two twenty-something male speedsters.

A mere minute or so after Caitlin disappearance, Iris is longing for her company again. Not just because the lab is dark and she knows someone would be take her out easily in this state if they were to try, but because having the doctor around somehow eases her nerves but accelerates her heartbeat all at once; and it’s a feeling Iris enjoys over and over again. She’s not used to being without it either, even if she and Caitlin don’t speak much on normal occasions, they’re always in the same vicinity, just skirting around each other as two separate entities. Like parallel lines, going in the same direction, so close, but never crossing paths.

Only now, Iris feels as if their lines have intersected. Like maybe all of her quiet dreams and lingering glances might land her somewhere beautiful instead of sending her down the road of loneliness she’d always envisioned for herself after all of the time she’d spent pining after Caitlin Snow.

Her mind begins to wander even farther, thinking of what it would be like to kiss her. Would their first lip lock be sweet and gentle, slow desire burning in Iris’s chest the entire time they’re intertwined and leaving just enough to be desired afterwards? Or would it be more rough, leaving the deep shade of red lipstick Caitlin has taken such a liking to smeared slightly on Iris’s lips--

Caitlin’s head peeks around the corner of the cortex entrance and her abrupt return interrupts Iris’s thought process and she can feel a warm blush creep across her cheeks unwillingly. How had she allowed her mind to wander so far from reality?

“Do you prefer regular hot chocolate or white chocolate hot chocolate? We have both.” Caitlin holds up one dark brown mixture packet in one hand and one white one in the other. “Have you ever tried the white chocolate? Oh my god, it’s delicious, but I’m the only one who likes it. Cisco says it’s ungodly and ruins the purity of all real hot chocolate with it’s existence. He’s so dramatic, but anyway-- uhm, do you even care? Or I can make both, if you want, I mean. . .”

Iris giggles at her babbling, it’s so adorable her chest feels as though it could combust. “White chocolate, for you.”

Caitlin smiles and ducks away again, reappearing a moment later with a STAR Labs sweatshirt and a few blankets draped over her arm. It’s only then that Iris remembers the cold air that’s hitting her bare midriff and shoulders, or feels the weight of the heat pack on her wound. But she only shivers once before Caitlin is raising Iris’s arms over her head and tugging the sweatshirt down over the exposed skin. 

She’s so close Iris can smell her flowery perfume and see the dusting of makeup brushed across her nose, covering the dainty freckles that speckle her pale cheeks. She wonders why Caitlin would ever cover up freckles, Iris would die for some of her own, but she’s too busy snuggling into the warmth of the sweatshirt to ask why. Another time, she tells herself as her eyes flutter closed.

“Hey hey hey,” Caitlin says, taking Iris’s face in her hands after quickly draping a blanket over the woman’s shoulders. Her thumbs gently brush Iris’s cheekbones for a moment and the reporter wonders if the motion was supposed to wake her up and not lull her further into sleep.

“Mm,” Iris sighs. It’s not real a response, probably not the one Caitlin was wanting, but she’s playing footsie with the line between conscious and unconsciousness and only hearing bits and pieces of everything. It also doesn’t help that Caitlin’s hands, just as soft as she’d imagined, are still cupping her cheeks, the warmth they’re providing alone enough to raise her body temperature back to normal.

“Can you stay awake for me please?” Though Caitlin surely meant it as a question, her voice is twinged with desperation. Iris realizes that maybe her condition was worse than she thought, that the darkness she had been so longing for was actually death.

“If I fall asleep will it hurt me any?” Iris lays down on the cot, surprised at the spaciousness of it. Her eyes are still closed, but she speaks, the words nothing more than a mumbled breath. Caitlin is close enough that she hears it anyway and with a sigh removes her hands from Iris’s face.

“I suppose not. . . resting is probably good for you anyway, now that your vitals are no longer plummeting and your body temp on a steady rise. I’ll keep the cocoa warm and get more blankets if you want.”

She’s doing that walking-away-before-Iris-has-a-chance-to-answer thing again, the click of her heels already fading. Her dejection was clear, even if friendly kindness was trying to conceal it. And even though she’s very glad her sleeping will not result in her never waking up, Iris thinks that Caitlin must be very lonely, all by herself in this lab when everyone else has gone home to family and friends each night. Iris never, ever wants her to feel that way again. Not while she was around, loving her so dearly, but letting Caitlin suffer while she works up the courage to act upon her feelings.

So when she calls out weakly, it’s out of longing for the comfort and warmth only Caitlin provide. A desperate need to make sure the doctor never feels alone again.

“Cait?”

The clicking of heels stops.

“Can you stay with me? Up here?” Iris shivers and uses that as an excuse for her next line: “Maybe the warmth of another body will help boost my recovery.”

Iris opens her eyes just a bit to see Caitlin’s small smile in the dim moonlight, as she slips off her heels and walks back towards the cot. For a moment she looks ready to climb up immediately, but then pauses at the side in hesitation, fingers idly rubbing the fleece blanket Iris had burrowed herself under.

“Are you sure you’re. . . you know. . .”

Officially too tired to respond, Iris laughs once at her stubbornness then extends her hand from underneath the blanket and pulls Caitlin onto the cot with her. It’s awkward at first, she’ll admit, but after twisting back and forth a few times, trying to make sure they’re both comfortable and the blanket is evenly distributed, Iris ends up the little spoon with Caitlin’s frontside warming her back and making her feel safe in a way she hadn’t in a long time. A few of Caitlin’s curls spill over Iris’s shoulder and she can’t think of a better way to fall asleep than with the smell of tea tree tickling her nose.

Iris snuggles deep, pulling the blanket tighter around her. She can feel Caitlin shift to where her lips are closer to Iris’s ear, sending a shiver up her spine when she speaks.

“You know you’re a bit of a blanket hog, West.”

Iris elbows her in the stomach and after Caitlin’s giggle the world is quiet again, the hum of machinery still going at a steady pace in the background. It’s now lulling Iris to sleep, and as soon as Caitlin’s breath goes even and she begins to snore softly, she allows herself to drift off as well.

STAR Labs is a lot more comforting at night, indeed.


End file.
